


To feed a starving man on breadcrumbs

by sapphire_child



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Community: then_theres_us, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-17
Updated: 2011-02-17
Packaged: 2019-01-27 23:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12593052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire_child/pseuds/sapphire_child
Summary: One finger caresses a sweet line of warmth down his cheek, like a tear of molten gold and he tries desperately hard not to crack in two. Her lips trace the slipstream and come to rest on his chin, trembling as it is. She kisses him there, so softly, and draws back to whisper her love to him like the universes greatest secret.





	To feed a starving man on breadcrumbs

**Author's Note:**

> for [](https://rubberbisquit.livejournal.com/profile)[**rubberbisquit**](https://rubberbisquit.livejournal.com/) \- cheers matey mate. And sorry but it didn't turn out as fluffy as I'd hoped :P

She/they save him when he’s least expecting it. Like when he mortally offends a Queen on a far distant world that’s frighteningly reminiscent of Wonderland. He and Rose wind up in a maze, fighting for their life with the TARDIS hidden somewhere within, both a prize and their only salvation.

After an hour of running around in circles dodging murderous soldiers and all manner of foul creatures they’re both getting worn down and a bit cranky. (The Queens rambunctious laughter echoing out of the ten million speakers set into the hedges is getting a little tiresome too). So the Doctor is busy soniccing things and Rose is swinging a branch around like a makeshift club when he sees it.

A sign, much like the many others scattered throughout the maze. It’s sitting neatly by one of the paths but the sign atop it is not emblazoned with directions designed to bamboozle – just a great, big, cursive ‘B’. The Doctor is momentarily distracted by the queerness of it and he moves toward it unthinkingly.

Rose follows automatically, still covering his back with her stick and he knows he’s hit on the money when he spots another sign, barely visible down the next path.

‘A’.

They’re ridiculously easy to follow and by the time he’s reached ‘W’ the slightly sick feeling in the pit of his stomach has been replaced by something like joy, bubbling up from deep within him. The Queen is shrieking with rage which can only mean they’re on the right path and they’re so close...

O. L.

“This way!” he calls back to Rose (who of course, has been at his heels the whole time) and now they’re running and there, sitting smugly next to the ‘F’ is the TARDIS. Behind them all of the monsters in Wonderland are clamouring for their blood and somehow they still manage to throw themselves inside and to safety, the creatures howling and banging at the door and the echo of the Queen’s shrieks of disbelief following them into the Vortex.

“How’d you know which way to go?” Rose demands, eyes wide. They grow even wider when he laughs in delight and sweeps her into a warm kiss that has her spluttering in shock.

“You are _marvellous_ , you know that?” he tells her. “Marvellous!”

“Me?” she blinks in surprise. “What’d _I_ do?”

“Breadcrumbs.” He says simply, and can’t stop grinning as he pulls her into an ungainly, impromptu foxtrot. “S’wonderful,” he croons, just slightly off key and Rose’s eyes glow with laughter and something else entirely. “S’marvellous. You should care – for me...”

~*~

  
After she is stolen from him he only sees it a handful of times. Not a warning but a message, a nudge to push him in the right direction. He dabbles in her timeline, quietly, under the watchful direction of the Wolf. He finally goes back and delivers the red bicycle he promised her so long ago, purchased with psychic paper at the bike shop, next to the Wolf and Moon bookstore and at the corner of Badling Street (the ‘ling’ part long since crossed out by vandals of course).

The day she covers a marketplace in Shan Shen with her calling card though, he gets that slightly sick, utterly terrified feeling again. It’s a warning, plain and simple and he’s hardly surprised when all the signs lead him back to Bad Wolf Bay.

He leaves her with a part of him she can keep safe for the rest of her forever. Only fair really, under the circumstances. She’s already saved him more times than he can count, given him second chances he never dreamed of having.

Now it’s _his_ turn to give something back.

~*~

  
She visits him in the restless world of dreams – the first that he’s allowed himself to have in a long time. He’s just so _tired_ now, he could do with the respite. It’s almost a relief when she appears to him.

“Rose,” he breathes gratefully but then he sees the flash of gold in her eyes and he squeezes his eyes shut, knowing that she is so much more than that here. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“So don’t.” She says it like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “Let go.”

His breath hitches once and his fingers hook into the familiar fabric of an old pink hoodie. Clutch on and cling.

“I don’t want to go,” he admits hoarsely. “I’m going to lose so much this time. Everything I’ve been through, everything I am...the way I feel for you.”

“Course you’re not,” she reprimands him with no bite, pulls her sleeve free and places a hand on one of his hearts, then the other. “Cos I’ll still be out there, loving you. And you’ll remember how it felt. That’ll never go away.”

He shakes his head. Disbelieving and horribly, horribly alone and so very afraid. The lonely little boy, nine-hundred years young and wanting, _needing_...

“You know that place between sleep and awake?” she whispers, stroking his troubled brow with careful, questing fingers. He tries to open his eyes but she bids him hush, strokes his eyelids shut again. “That place where you still remember dreaming?”

One finger caresses a sweet line of warmth down his cheek, like a tear of molten gold and he tries desperately hard not to crack in two. Her lips trace the slipstream and come to rest on his chin, trembling as it is. She kisses him there, so softly, and draws back to whisper her love to him like the universes greatest secret.

“That’s where I’ll always love you.”

And this time he _does_ let out a sob, pressing his face into the ground beneath until the grit digs in and hurts. Her touch is soft, like butterflies pressing through his hair or whispering against his face and hands. Through gritted teeth he lets out a sound of anguished grief, thrashing against the unjustness of it all but then she strokes his cheek and he opens his eyes to hers – strange and golden and warm.

“My Doctor,” she says and it is both solemn and loving. Sorrowful and pitying and proud all at once and somehow he manages to smile for her, a grimace incapable of showing just how much this hurts. Just how much he wants to stay – if it means he’ll get to keep on loving her. Even if he lives on forever alone and lonely with his hearts so broken that...that...

“That’s where I’ll be waiting.”

“Don’t go,” he begs, clinging to her again. “Don’t leave me!”

“Oh Doctor,” she says gently and her eyes are smiling with that gentle mocking he remembers with such painful clarity. “I love you too much to ever leave you.”

~*~

  
In the end, when time is surging golden-bright through his body, healing and changing him like the sweetest of poisons, his last thoughts are of her – _I want you safe_ and _**my** Doctor_.

It is in a burst of clarity, sharp as gold filigree that he realises just how intertwined with his long, long life they both really are. How much of his life has been inadvertently shaped by golden light and a woman-goddess who loved him so much she set the strings of time trembling with it.

She will always save him – has always saved him. She has loved him since before he ever dreamed of loving her and he has faith that she will love him and keep him safe until time ends.


End file.
